AMD has recently revealed their new AMD Radeon R9 285 graphics card based on the 28nm Tonga chip. It features 1792 Stream Processors with an engine clock speed of up to 918MHz (boost). It comes in either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 memory running on a 256-bit memory interface. The Radeon R9 285 is primarily designed to compete with the ageing GeForce GTX 760. It also supports both Mantle and DirectX 12. Check out more features, specifications, price as well as some benchmarks below.
AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Features
The AMD Radeon R9 285 will replace the old Radeon R9 280, but comes with a lower 256-bit instead of 384bit memory interface in the R9 280. It has a memory clock speed of 1375MHz (5.5GHz effective) and will come in either 2GB or 4GB variants. AMD hasn’t disclosed its base clock, but its boost clock speed is up to 918MHz, slight slower than the R9 280. It has a thermal design power of 190W which is 60W lower compared to the Tahiti-powered R9 280, and draws its power from 2x 6-pin power connector.
The AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga has a compute performance of 3.29 TFLOPS and 112 Texture Units. It has up to 102.8GT/s of Texture Fill-Rate and 32 ROPs. It also has a Pixel Fill-Rate of up to 29.8GP/s and Z/Stencil of 128. The R9 285 is based on GCN 1.1 and will support True Audio, Mantle, DirectX 12 and bridgeless CrossFire like the R9 290s.
The Tonga-based AMD Radeon R9 285 replaces the R9 280, and sits between the R9 270X and R9 280X. It will also compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 760 and is said to be up to 15% faster. A month from now, AMD will be releasing its bigger brother, the Radeon R9 285X which will replace the R9 280X.
AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Specifications
GPU: Tonga Pro
Stream Processors: 1792
ROPs: 32
Texture Units: 112
Base Clock: ???
Boost Clock: 918MHz
Memory Size: 2GB/4GB
Memory Clock: 1375MHz (5.5GHz Effective)
Memory Bus: 256-bit
Bandwidth: 176GB/s
Power Connector: 2x 6-pin
TDP: 190W
AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Benchmarks
AMD has tested the Radeon R9 285 and benchmarked it using 3DMark FireStrike and FireStrike Extreme. They used an Intel Core i7-4960X, MSI X79A-GD65, 16GB DDR3-1866, Windows 8.1 64bit, and AMD Catalyst 14.8 RC.
The Radeon R9 285 got an overall score of 7066 in 3DMark FireStrike and 3513 points in 3DMark FireStrike Extreme. Meanwhile the GeForce GTX 760 that they tested it with, got only 5650 and 2774 in FireStrike and FireStrike Extreme respectively.
Anyway, these are benchmarks done by AMD themselves, so let’s just wait when companies like Sapphire, PowerColor, HIS, Gigabyte, Asus and more, release their R9 285s.
Price and Availability
The AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga based GPU is expected to be released on September 2, and availability is expected to start on September 2 as well. In addition, AMD also announced their Never Settle: Space Edition game bundle promotion that includes Star Citizen and more.
